I am visiting my father in Arkansas. In the country. Anyway I want to hook up to their wireless signal. They have a desktop Mac and a laptop Mac. I guess the desktop sends a wireless signal to the laptop. There is no router. Well when i start my windows vista laptop and detect wi-fi signals it detects his signal but when trying to connect it asks for: logon id, password, and domain. My dad has no idea where to find this info and I am not familiar at all with Mac computers. Where can I get this info. I am guess it is on the desktop Mac somewhere. Is it even possible for a Windows PC to connect to a Mac wi-fi signal?
I assume you are somewhat computer literate. On the MAC, bring up the system preferences panel (looks like a 'gear' in a box on the tool bar). From there, click on 'network' and root around to see if you recognize what need to be configured. Also, bring up 'Finder' (should be on the far left of the tool bar). Select Applications-Utilities and see if he has an Airport Utility. Again, root around with that to see if anything needs to be changed or configured.
how many computers are involved? two macs and a PC laptop? and are you sure there is no router? I've never heard of a Mac sending a wi-fi signal to another Mac without a router being involved.
I think you can use a mac as a router, but I think the desktop must be must be wired to the internet.
you'll need to have internet sharing turned on on the mac. you can find this in either the network pref pane, or the accounts pane (not sure which). the login ID and password are probably what he uses when he logs into his computer, assuming he hasn't set it up to automatically log in.
btw, a simpler solution might just be to buy him a cheap linksys router, and set up a wireless network for everyone.
Just did a quick google search. It's an older article, but it might help. How to use your Mac as a wireless router I had no idea iMac's could do that! Pretty cool.
yes there is no router. dsl going straight into the mac desktop. He said when he got the laptop it automatically hooked up to the airport coming from the mac desktop. did need all that logon info.
that's a pretty cool trick! OP, check the instructions on the link professorjay provided and go through the "Sharing" tab under Internet & Network
